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List Price: $26.95Amazon.com's Price: $20.48 You Save: $6.47 (24%)Prices subject to change.
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 797.14
EAN: 9780393303339
ISBN: 0393303330
Label: W.W. Norton & Co.
Manufacturer: W.W. Norton & Co.
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 400
Publication Date: June 17, 1986
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.
Studio: W.W. Norton & Co.
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
"Possibly the best book on racing tactics ever written." —Ted Jones, Dolphin Book Club News Today far more sailors than ever before have reached a superior level of competitive ability, and the few individuals who remain at the head of the competitive classes year and after year must contantly improve their skills. This book will help the sailor analyze for himself the determinants of tactical success.
One of the foremost theoreticians of the art of yacht racing, Stuart H. Walker is also an outstanding practicing racer. For eight years Dr. Walker kept a complete record of the factors that determined the outcome of every race in which he competed. The recommendations he offers in Advanced Racing Tactics are based upon the analysis of these races—the mistakes and the successes. He sets forth basic principles of starting, beating, reaching, and mark rounding that should be practiced every time, and he underlines what mattered, what consistently provided an advantage.
The advanced racing skipper, Dr. Walker writes, must look around, examine his own mistakes and successes, record them, review them, remember them. When he recognizes from this own experience the validity of the principles presented here, they will become useful to him. When he has incorporated them into his regular racing patterns, he will have made a five- or ten-year leap forward.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
I bought this book many years ago and learned a few important tips from it. Why it is good to sail into a persistent shift upwind, and how to choose a side downwind (and why jibe-sets are important) for example. Yes the information is useful, but the book requires diligent plowing through to turn up the occasional useful nugget -- I found the anecdotes tedious after a while. I picked it up again recently and found it all but unreadable. I have sailed for many years and still find this work terribly wordy and filled with ambiguous jargon.
A good author or teacher will distil a complex subject into simple understandable concepts that can then be presented and digested readily before they are developed further. This work falls short in that regard.
As a brief example of the pedantry in store for you, consider this passage: "Head-to head conflicts must be welcomed as opportunities to demonstrate superiority, with the recognition that most competitors will be adversely affected by the demonstration."
All that said, anyone with the patience (It'll take a winter) to tough it out and get through this book will probably learn quite a bit about racing small boats. Hopefully enough to rewrite it in a more clear, logical and intelligible manner.
Rating:  -
this is an outstanding and thorough evaluation of what is involved in sailing a good race beyond trimming the sails correctly and handling the boat well
Rating:  -
Anyone who has read Mr. Walker's work understands that he takes a very technical and analyitcal look at the sport of yacht racing. It is definatly an effort to get through the book, and I feel that the beginner will not get much out of it. Overall, he is very thorough and on target. There is much to be learned from the book, and it will make a person a better racer.
One humorous aspect of the book (and all of Mr. Walker's writing, for that matter) is that most of his examples consists of times that he has screwed up and lost the race. The reader occasionally wonders whether he should be taking his advice.... ;) However, the examples are often excellent illustrations of the point he is trying to make.
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